The Return of Buzz Aldrin

In Print

By Dawn Bailey

Of all the billions of people who have inhabited this planet, only 100 or so (most of them U.S. Government employees) have experienced the magnificence of space at first hand. Yet, for those of us who have never walked on the moon, the concept of space travel has gone from myth to the mundane. Space exploration is just another something “we” do, and if our newspapers and television stations are any indication, it’s only interesting when something goes wrong.

Yet something exciting happens when we actually meet an astronaut: we look in his eyes, knowing he has seen a world we will never see. And for those precious few who have set foot on the moon — that beautiful siren that drives our oceans and our tides, our poetry and our songs — things can never be quite the same